Rheological Properties of Blended Solutions of Tunicate and Plant Celluloses
Daisuke TATSUMI, Masahiro YANAGISAWA and Takayoshi MATSUMOTO
Abstract:Celluloses from different biological origins were blended to get solutions having various molecular weights and molecular distributions of the polymer. The flow curves of the cellulose blends lay between those of the original solutions. The high molecular weight component, tunicate cellulose, had remarkable effect on the long-time region of the viscoelastic functions of the blends. The weight fraction dependence of the zero-shear viscosity of the blends can be expressed by a linear mixing relation based on Ninomiya theory. The zero-shear viscosities of the blends are in proportion to the 5/2-th power of the weight-average molecular weight calculated from a linear combination of that of each component. This indicates that the zero-shear viscosity of the cellulose blends depends strongly on the molecular weight but scarcely on the molecular distribution. Key Words:Blend, Cellulose, Molecular distribution, Tunicine, LiCl/1,3-dimethyl-2-imidazolidinone, Linear mixing, Viscosity